Okay kiddo, have you ever seen an artist draw a picture from scratch? They start with a blank piece of paper and they draw lines, shapes and colors until they have a beautiful piece of art.
Now, imagine a computer program that can create its own pictures just like the artist, but without any guidance. This computer program is called a flow-based generative model.
The way it works is by analyzing lots of pictures and learning how they are put together. The program figures out what lines, shapes, and colors go together to create a specific object or scene.
Once the program has learned how to create these pictures, it can start making its own! It starts with a blank canvas and creates random lines, shapes, and colors that fit together just like in the pictures it learned from.
As it creates more and more pictures, the program learns and improves its ability to create new and unique pictures. It's like a never-ending art class for a computer!
So, in summary, a flow-based generative model is a fancy computer program that can draw its own pictures by learning from other pictures and figuring out how they are put together. It's like a computer artist that never stops learning and creating new things. Cool, huh?